Alec Baldwin Quits Public Life And NYC While Bashing Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Shia LaBeouf, And More

Aly Weisman, provided by

Published 11:40 am, Monday, February 24, 2014

Alec Baldwin appears on the latest cover of New York magazine with the headline "I Give Up."

Inside the magazine, the actor opens up in a 5,284-word essay,as told to Joe Hagan,about everything he currently hates. And it's a lot.

"This is the last time I’m going to talk about my personal life in an American publication ever again," the 55-year-old states, adding that he plans to move to California. "I've lived this for 30 years, I'm done with it."

Here's everything and everyone Baldwin bashes in his cover story, "Good-bye, Public Life":

The Year 2013:

"I’ve read where a number of people have felt that 2013 was a s----y year. For me, it was actually a great year, because my wife and I had a baby. But, yeah, everything else was pretty awful."

America:

"I think America’s more f----- up now than it’s ever been. People are angry that in the game of musical chairs that is the U.S. economy, there are less seats at the table when the music stops. And at every recession, the music is stopping."

New York City:

"New York has changed ... I’ve lived in New York since 1979. It was a place that they gave you your anonymity. And not just if you were famous ... And now we don’t leave each other alone. Now we live in a digital arena, like some Roman Colosseum, with our thumbs up or thumbs down.

I probably have to move out of New York. I just can’t live in New York anymore. Everything I hated about L.A. I’m beginning to crave. L.A. is a place where you live behind a gate, you get in a car, your interaction with the public is minimal. I used to hate that. But New York has changed. Manhattan is like Beverly Hills. And the soul of New York has moved to Brooklyn, where everything new and exciting seems to be. I have to accept that. I want my newest child to have as normal and decent a life as I can provide. New York doesn’t seem the place for that anymore."

The Media:

"Now I loathe and despise the media in a way I did not think possible. I used to engage with the media knowing that some of it would be adversarial, but now it’s superfluous at best and toxic at its worst."

Paparazzi:

"Paparazzi today are part of a network that includes the Huffington Post and, much to my dismay, even NBC News, in their reliance on tabloid reporting. Photographers today get right up in your face, my wife’s, my baby’s. They are baiting you. You can tell they want to get into it with you. Some bump into me or block the entrance to my apartment."

Harvey Levin, TMZ Founder:

"Harvey Levin exists in his own universe. He’s this kind of cretinous barnacle on the press ... Levin has so little regard for the truth."

Fans With Cameras:

"They take your picture in line for coffee. They’re trying to get a picture of your baby. Everyone’s got a camera. When they’re done, they tweet it. It’s … unnatural ... You’re out there in a world where if you do make a mistake, it echoes in a digital canyon forever."

On Being Fired From His MSNBC Talk Show:

"I never wanted to be on MSNBC ... I watched MSNBC, prior to working there, very sporadically. Once I had signed a contract with them, I wanted to see more of what they were about. It turned out to be the same s--- all day long."

Phil Griffin, Head of MSNBC:

"When I saw that Griffin didn’t have a single piece of paper on his desk, meeting after meeting after meeting, that should have been my first indication there was going to be a problem ... He couldn’t give a flying f--- about content. All he wanted to talk about was Giants tickets, Super Bowl tickets, restaurants, movies."

"Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough:

"Morning Joe was boring. Scarborough is neither eloquent nor funny. And merely cranky doesn’t always work well in the morning."

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow:

"Rachel Maddow was the prime mover in my firing, as she was aghast that I had been hired and viewed me as equivalent to Mel Gibson. Another source told me, 'You know who’s going to get you fired, don’t you? Rachel. Phil will do whatever Rachel tells him to do.' I think Rachel Maddow is quite good at what she does. I also think she’s a phony who doesn’t have the same passion for the truth off-camera that she seems to have on the air."

CNN's Anderson Cooper:

"Anderson Cooper, the self-appointed Jack Valenti of gay media culture, suggested I should be 'vilified,' in his words."

His ill-fated "Orphans" co-star on Broadway, Shia LaBeouf:

"Getting back onstage seemed like a good idea ... Then Shia LaBeouf showed up. There was friction between us from the beginning. He learned all his lines in advance, even emailing me videos in which he read aloud his lines from the entire play ... I, however, do not learn my lines in advance. So he began to sulk because he felt we were slowing him down. You could tell right away he loves to argue. And one day he attacked me in front of everyone. He said, 'You’re slowing me down, and you don’t know your lines. And if you don’t say your lines, I’m just going to keep saying my lines.'

... I said one of us is going to go. I said, 'I’ll tell you what, I’ll go.' I said don’t fire the kid, I’ll quit. They said no, no, no, no, and they fired him. And I think he was shocked."

But there's one thing Alec Baldwin actually likes! His time on "30 Rock":

"I loved 30 Rock. I mean, sometimes you do a show that’s a hit show and you hate it. We had a ball. And everybody was funny. And I’ll never laugh that way again. And I miss that show terribly. I know we all had to move on because it’s Tina Fey’s show and Tina had worked herself to death. She’s a mom with two kids. Eventually, it had to end. But I’ll never have it that good again, professionally."